Example sentences of "[modal v] [verb] [be] a [adj] [noun] " in BNC.

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1 When told by them that the sales of budgerigar seed were disastrous and the market might easily disappear within a few years , Mrs Franklin came back with what you may think was a simple answer — but it was profound in terms of changing British public opinion — she said , " Breed your own consumers . "
2 There must 've been a little bit of snow
3 you may even and this is a bit I mean Saturday lunchtime is a bit I 'm almost almost er oh the producer 's going , Careful careful , which he should know is a red flag to a bull and I might say no but I wo n't .
4 It is now recognised that the costing of community-based care to take account of the wider back-up services on which it must depend is a complicated calculation which was not available with any degree of sophistication at the height of the movement away from institutional care ( Knapp , 1986 ) .
5 However , whereas it should have been a joyous occasion , it was not .
6 The opportunity should have been a real opportunity of doing something effective .
7 The two tall oblongs of light from the first-floor drawing-room window should have been a welcoming promise of warmth and comfort .
8 IT SHOULD have been a good week .
9 Twice , in less than four days , what should have been a simple operation had turned bad .
10 But when I later tried to find my way back to the dining-room to finish my meal , which should have been a simple thing to do , I just could not locate it at all .
11 It should have been a simple matter to check , but the dosimeters for measuring radioactivity were locked in a safe and the panel in the control room was dead .
12 What should have been a simple review looked like it was about to turn into techno-confusion when the owner 's manual stated I could find a hook-up diagram on page 42 , and it was n't there .
13 There should have been a better backcloth , something that smacked more of the dramatic and less of the bare ordinariness of these humble homes .
14 Home I went for the Christmas vac with the ragged tatters of what should have been a well-moulded start to a brilliant career !
15 It should have been a new beginning , a clean slate but , as she rode out the following morning , her head clouded from lack of sleep , Kelly knew that life was never that easy .
16 Even allowing for what they would have lost on laundering the proceeds , there should have been a tidy sum .
17 The Sun decisively sabotaged what should have been a major circulation booster for its main competitor .
18 Given his abilities and his natural desire to go into space , it should have been a logical extension of his career to graduate from the Air Force into the Space Programme .
19 IT SHOULD have been a great year for Julie Walters .
20 The visit should have been a great success for both the tall and the short mavericks of the respective alliances .
21 It was a beautiful day with small cumulus clouds and about thirty miles visibility , and it should have been a great experience , but unfortunately I felt deadly sick all the way and could hardly bear to look out .
22 What should have been a great event was diminished .
23 Hugh Kenner veers unexpectedly into the idiom of the British schoolboy : ‘ Blast should have been a great lark ’ .
24 There should have been a second woman here to receive her honourary degree — Aung San Suu Kyi — founder of the fledgling Burmese democracy movement .
25 I felt the most awful failure , and thought that perhaps if we could try again — since the thing was done , the point of no return passed — we might arrange things better , somehow recapture the basis of feeling we had had , which should have been a perfect foundation for a love-affair , but which we had somehow bungled and thrown away .
26 Gloucester never got themselves into gear and they made hard work of what should have been a straightforward game … in the second half they hammered away at Scottish … all but lived on their line but failed to get over it …
27 ENGLAND manager Geoff Cooke , horrified by violence that marred what should have been a gentle centenary celebration , read the riot act to the players after England 's new kids on the block found themselves on the rack at Leicester .
28 Midge protested at what she saw as bureaucratic interference in what should have been a private grief .
29 The recent single , Love You All My Lifetime , should have been a bigger hit and shows that Chaka can still sound as if she 's bursting with all the joys of spring .
30 Nkrumah saw this as a contradiction , and was critical , thus annoying Nyerere who should have been a natural ally .
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